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SPEECH 



CHARLES ANDERSON, ESQ., 



STATE OF THE COUNTRY, 



kT A MEETING 



OF THE PEOPLE OF BEXAR COUNTY, AT SAN ANTOXIA, TEXAS, 



ISTOVEAIBER 24r, 1860. 



WASHINGTON: 

PRINTED BY LEMUEL TOWERS. 

1860. 



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V 



SPEECH 

OF 

CHARLES ANDERSON, ESQ., 

IN REPLY TO 



DELIVERED 



NOVEMBER. 24., 1860. 



Mr. Anderson being loudly and generally called for, came forward and 
addressed the audience in reply to Dr. Boring and upon tbe general ques- 
tion. As tbe speech and the occasion itself were wholly unexpected to 
iH hiru, of course it would be utterly impossible for himself or any one else 
to recall it in any subsequent report. With many things, doubtless, omitted 
and others now inserted, and some points elaborated upon, the following 
will be found in substance, a correct report of his remarks: 

Mr. President and Fellow-Citizens : 

I trust that, in answering this general and most unexpected call, it will 
not be thought out of place for me to follow the example of my friend, Dr. 
Boring, and say a few brief words of the speaker, as a preliminary to the 
speech. Not that, of myself, I am of the least consequence in such a con- 
troversy. For, as I look upon the stupendous issues, which have convened 
tills large assembly, we are nothing and less than nothing — ihe merestchaft 
in the wind — only the dust of the balance in the comparison. But T do 
think it well enough, to say as much of myself, as my reverend friend has 
said of himself, in order properly to interpret and translate my views and 
sentiments, upon questions so exciting and so liable to misinterpretation. 
Like him, then, I too was born and reared in a slave State, and early be- 
came attached to its people and institutions. But, unlike him ])erhaps, 
circumstances peculiar and personal, in a rather wandei'itig lilj||had caused 
me to pass mauy years in the Nortii. To this fact it is, that I attribute my 
supposeil ability to consider all tht.'se questions with somewhat more ex- 
perience and impartial moderation, than he and many others may be able 
to bestow upon them. It is the more necessary, too, for me so to explain 
myself, because I stand now before you, a new comer to your State — a 
stranger in your midst, with no partizan or sectarian alliances to back and 
sustain me, and with no helps or iiiHuences to lend extraneous power to my 
words. I am only furnished with that power, which a simple and sincere 
purpose to declare the truth, and which the truths that, in the sequel, I 
may be enabled to show to you, lends to any private citizen. For, I am not a. 



Metliodist preacliev, nor a Presbyterian preaclier, nor a preacher, or priest, 
or layman, of any persuasion or denomination. And I trust in God I never 
shall be, if I should be thereby compelled to forget my love for my whole 
country. Alas! for me, sinner that I am, I have in truth no religion, ex- 
cept that earnest and ardent devotion to the Union of these States and my 
native land, in which I was nurtured from my birth, and which I shall take 
with uie to my grave. I cannot, then, superadd to my facts and arguments, 
the weight of any church or association, much less that vast weight which 
the very extraordinary mental abilities and moral influence that Dr. Boring 
brings into this arena of debate. Few men anywhere equal that gentle- 
man in the clearness and depth and breadth of his intellect, and the force 
and directness of his logic; the simplicity and intelligibility ol his diction ; 
his scientific and scholarly attainments, or in that imposing, moral influence 
over his audience, with which such qualities always arm a speaker, who 
obviout-ly has an honest, earnest, aixlent heart. I have often been a witness 
to these powers and qualities of this gentleman in his pulj>it. And we 
have all seen and felt them in this discussion. 

But there is one thing I can do as well as other men. I can speak plain, 
straightforward truths, when I know them. And, as I have had occasion 
and the courage often before this, in the northern States, to audiences as 
large and as heated by partizan and sectional passions, as you are on this 
momentous occasion, to utter most unwelcome truths of fact and warning, 
so do I now and here make bold to tell you to your faces, what I know or 
think of the rights, interests, duties and faults of the South, and in all this 
now dreadful matter. My friends, this is by no manner of means the first 
time that I have discussed these high and solemn themes. Then, however, 
they were in the distance of apprehension. Now, alas ! alas I thanks only 
to the madness of sectional parties, they are frightfully near and instant 
upon us. 

"We have truly fallen upon evil times." A meeting of American citi- 
zens is here solemnly convened, seriously to discuss and decide the further 
existence of our blessed Union! And has it indeed come to this? Has 
the madness of faction, the virulence of fanatacism, at last reached this 
point? Have sectional partizans finally dared to make, or devise, an assault 
upon this beloved and most glorious Union, which our Fathers of the South 
and the North shed their united blood to cement and establish; which our 
Mothers blessed in the earliest prayers of their infancy ; which nurtured 
and protected our first and best yeais, and which, under God's providence, 
is, I trust, destined to be to our children's childiX'n, to the latest generations 
of mankind, the very greatest boon and blessing which human minds and 
hands ever planned and executed, or the Divine Will has permitted. Oh! 
may it stand, my friends, as deep in the earth and high in the Heavens as 
the graudea^ mountain ; as wide and glorious as "old ocean," and as all 
enclosing and vitalizing to its generations as the circumambient air ! Whilst 
ever these fair, blue and bended skies, with their kindling lights of day and 
night, shall surround our earth, oh! may this dear Union of our native 
land — the next most wise and pure and grand of all the creations — alike 
continue to encompass us and ouvs forever. 

liut now, alas ! we are " calndy and deliberately" assured, from the pulpit 
of the Law and Gospel — by no frothy, shallow demagogue of politics — ac- 
cursed politics! — by the lips and tongue of a man really wise, pious and 
honest — that this vast fabric has crumbled; "that the Union tV already 
dissolved." W^e are informed, as a fixed and certain fact of history, that 



our national destiny is fulfilled ; that, like dead leaves on the wind, our In- 
stitutions have drifted away into the past forever; and that we are not here 
assembled to consider of their further existence or perpetuity, but to divide 
their spoils and take administration of the eflects. Whilst we were so en- 
tertained — with the vast and various thoughts and feelings and images of 
horror that trooped, thronging through my brain and heart, thrilling me 
with chilliness from scalp to soles — there was f Iways mingled one sad and 
dreadful picture; the children of one loving mother — a mother hale and 
well, though not happy, with the bloom yet in her fair cheek, the lovelight 
in her calm eyes, a grey hair only here and there silvering with a single 
thread her radiant looks — God bless the mother that bore us ! — the daughters 
born of such a mother, circling in a conclave over a plan of matricide and 
" the parting of her raiment amongst them." And yet, in all this mingled 
tide of sudden and new emotions, whilst he so calmly spoke, there came 
to me no flush of fiery anger ; no choking of bursting indignation ; no throb 
for instant vengeance. A deep and bitter grief — a most melting pity and 
sadness — filled me, until I thought I could weep — weep tears of blood — to 
see such treason in such men. 

The Doctor introduced what he called the moral aspect of this question, by 
saying that the slavery question had led to a perversion of r)ible doctiines, 
and narrating the history of the separation of the Methodist Church into 
Northern and Southern, and his own agency in it. And during this por- 
tion of his remarks, I could but wonder and ask myself — a question I have 
no right to ask him — it must lie in the silent recesses of his own heart, 
and under the eye of his God alone — "Is it possible, that the theological 
hates, which that sectarian division, proverbially the bitterest animosities, 
except sectional, of which the human heart is capable — is it possible that 
the gangrene of this old sore of the Methodist Church, North and South, 
still disturbs the even working of a mind so wise, and of a heart so good ? 
How else can we account for his appearance and his course here ? 

Let me proceed, however, in this most painful duty. The dissolution of 
our Union being concluded, accomplished — what did the gentleman next 
propound ? He announces the question, what now ought to be the next 
step of our State? Shall she re-establish her separate independence under 
her "Lone Star" government, or attach herself to the new Southern Con- 
federacy — already established, I suppose ? To this trivial question, tho 
Doctor having Georgia for his "country," of course advises against the " Lone 
Star" experiment. That is too expensive. Besides, (I trust I may add,) 
it was not in the South Carolina programme. As for myself, where the 
best is unbearable, I can make no choice or recommendation. By the way 
I see several blue cockades on hats and lappets ai'ound me. Are they 
emblems of the present Lone Star experiment — present whilst that high 
and bright banner of beauty and glory — our banner of stars and stripes — 
gaily ripples out all its bright stars to the admiring eyes of men and angels, 
or defiantly flaps its broad stripes in the face of every foe. " Our flag is 
still there !" (pointing to the proud banner over the Menger Hotel — amidst 
greatest cheering and enthusiasm.) But your Lone Star — where is t7.^ 
We well know its place in history. It was once an emblem of truth, 
courage, fidelity, honor, not treason. But in nature there are no lone 
stars. They cluster and constellate. The z'^ynis/a^wMS (the Jack-o-Iantern) 
only floats o'er fens and flats, pale, sickly, feeble, flickering, delusive sham 
of real stars. The historic Lone Star of Texas paused not in her dark 
solitude, but yielding to the life-like, divine impulse within her, towards 



6 

the great central luminary — our ConsLitution — she darted upwards wi'ih 
the speed of a comet and the power and brigiitness of the imperial Jupi- 
ter, to unite with that — our constellation — no more a lone star — but one of 
the celestial tlock, smoothly and sublimely wheeling and rolling her bright 
orb in her proper sphere of use and of glory. And there she floats in 
yonder sky ! Let us descend, however, from these heavenly flights, to bor- 
row some earthly lessons from her independaut career. 1 will not describe 
it at length. To be brief : It was very full of " honor," but dreadfully 
poor. Utter insolvency was the price she paid for solitary grandeur. 
And if she had been left a lone, [A voice in the crowd — "she would have 
died from starvation."] Starvation ? iny dear fellow — her carcass would 
have been so poor and thin, that these Mexican buzzards would have 
scorned the pickings! Let us hear no more then of these lone stars and 
blue cockades. And, as to blue cockades, are they of this age any better 
or less treasonable than were the black cockades of the Yankee treason 
in the last generation ? 1 pause for a reply. 

Secondly, [to follow the heads in their order.] The Union being now 
dissolved and our Texas interest and honor— 'uot pointing again towards 
any more Lone Star sky-larking, but to the Southern Constellation — the 
next question is: Has there been sufficient cause for such dissolution of 
our Government. The answer to this iuterestitig speculation is an easy 
yes. For these reasons. First. That the Norih, as a solid people — when 
the issue was the existence of slavery, in the platform of the Black Repub- 
lican party, and in the commitments of their candidate, Abraham Lincoln — . 
have elected him President of the United States, over the South, as a mi- 
nority. I endeavor to give the substance of the gentleman's propositions. 
I hope I do not misrepresent him. And now, permit me, in all possible 
courtesy and kindness, to the reverend gentleman — for I now repeat I am 
perfectly assured, that he is perfectly honest in this misunderstanding of 
the facts — let me say with firmness, however, that this is not so. The 
gentleman is mistaken. Southern presses and southern demagogues have 
so often repeated these statements, (Mr. Keite amongst the rest — in his late 
very able, eloquent and treasonable letter,) that I do not wonder at such a 
mistake by readers and hearers. But the record is not so, as I read it. 
Nor is there any use in continually makiiig that party worse than it really 
is. It is bad enough, God knows. I am the last )nan in this nation to set 
up any defences or palliations for that execrable party. I have personal 
reasons — superadded to public grounds — for hating it in its organization, 
material and leaders, such as no man here has, I know. Nevertheless, 
facts are facts. And for me, I will never stand silent, hearing my worst 
enemies so untruly abused, when that error of statevient is made a pretext 
for dissolving this Union. Misrepresentation of the record of the lilack 
Republican party, and of Mr. Lincoln, ibecomes a wholly ditferent matter, 
than injustice to them, for which I care nothing. It is a question touch- 
ino- an interest far higher and nobler than any man or any ]>arty — the 
Union of these States, for which I care everything. Accordingly and for- 
mally, I deny these propositions. There is in the Republican ])latform no 
assertion of a right, by the President, G ngress, or the National Judiciary, 
nor by the northern States or people, t<> abolish or interfere with the insti- 
tution of slavery in the States. On the contrary, these ])()wers are dis- 
tinctly disclaimed and denied. There is indeed an assertion of such powers 
in Congress, in reference to slavery in the territories. This is a very dif- 
ferent question. It is a question of grave doubts with many candid minds 



of all sections. As for my single self, I am free to say that I differ wholly 
from the Republican doctrines ; whether as to the equity of the case or its 
constitutionality. But I see no cause in this creed of party for dissolving 
the Union. I never shall see it until some one can make me see the pro- 
found wisdom of ^sop's dog ou the bridge, who dropped his real meat to 
snatch at the illusory shadow. 

Nor is it true^in the next place, that Mr. Lincoln, either before his nomi- 
nation or between that event and the election, has ever said, written or 
printed, so far the pixblic knows, any such claims of duty or power, for 
either government or people, as is here alleged. On the contrary, all we 
know of his record or opinions on this question of slavery in the States, is 
also a disclaimer and denial. And whilst the Congressional record shows 
his constant vote was against the abolition of slavery in the District of 
Columbia, it is a notorious fact that after all the efforts of the^bolitionists, 
during the campaign, to cajole or dragoon him into a recantation of that 
vote, he has steadly refused. And all we know of his principles since the 
election, is statements in the papers of his repeated declarations, that be 
will faithfully execute the fugitive slave law, and that he would not attempt 
to interfere with slavery in the District of Columbia, nor with the inter- 
States slave trade. So much from these records. Nor, again, is it at all 
true, as a matter of i'^ct, outside of the record, that the campaign in the 
North was conducted upon a public or general understanding, that the ex- 
istence of slavery in the States was the issue in this election. On the con- 
trary, you may take up any northern papers you please, and you cannot 
fail to see that such was not the understanding of the question in issue. 
[A voice in the crowd — " We want no more of these Black Republican 
arguments."] They are not Black Republican arguments. They are the 
simple truths, used and used alone, to prevent you and your confederates 
from misrepresenting them, in order to deceive and inflame the mind 
and hearts of southern men, as to their being cause for dissolving the 
Union. Nor am I coward enough to fear such taunts and to prevent me 
from boldly denouncing such statements, when used for such unholy pur- 
poses. I have, I say, met and resented such assaults in other crowds, 
where to defend your rights, required, at least, real manhood. Any dema- 
gogue — the shallowest of your candidates for Congress — will be veiy brave 
and zealous for your rights, whilst in our midst. Would he, if in the 
thick of your enemies? Will he tell you of your faults and follies? 

Nor lastly on this head, is it all true, that the northern people, as one 
body, actually elected Mr. Lincoln. And how amazing this error will ap- 
pear, when I state that the latest calculation of the returns shew, that, 
instead of our having no friends and all enemies in the North, ready " to 
march their sectional army down here, Qutting our throats and burning all 
our dwellings," as is alleged — there were in the free States, actually, 
400,000 more votes polled against Mr. Lincoln, than the entire vote of all 
parties in the slave Slates! What an astonishing difference, between the 
facts of actual figures and the figments of a heated or diseased imagination ! 
And let me here add — what a stupendous infatuation — insanity — must 
that be in a people, thus to throw away such a tremendous aimy of allies 
and friends, and in such positions, too, that you may well know them for 
your friends, tried and true — and to change them all — upon the very verge 
of a civil war most bloody and endless — into sworn, public, implacable 
enemies? Alas! for human nature ! It is the invariable law of all quar- 
rels, (whether between individuals, families, neighborhoods, States or sec- 



tions,) that they never quarrel long, without each becoming, by turns, in 
the wrong. In this, our sad series of controversies, it is indisputable, that 
the northern people were the first and the volunteer aggressors in an affair, 
both injurious to the interests and dangerous to the peace of the South, 
and which was in no respect their business. In such case, violent, indig- 
nant, revengeful feelings on your part is but natural, and, I think, right. 
Still, I do not think it wise, if it is natural, for us to commit suicide on its 
account. Nor is it my purpose or your interest on this occasion, at least, 
that I should follow the northern example and either devote myself to the 
very easy task of denouncing the absent, or to a free confession of their 
sins. I am sure it is far better, iu such a meeting as this is, to attempt to 
allay your angry passions and to mention to you, chiefly, your own share 
in this series of mutual errors. Other speakers will gladly enough avail 
themselves of amj opportunity, (whether feast or funeral,) to pursue the 
more congenial course of lashing themselves and their j^i'^sent audiences 
into a dangerous fury against a distant enemy. But this task is not to 
my taste. 

The second of the causes which are alleged to justify secession is, that 
ten of the eighteen free States have enacted penal laws, nullifying the fugi- 
tive slave law, and that their State courts have sustained and enforced 
them. And most true is it — it is indeed a lamentable, and horrible truth — 
that such nullifying and treasonable laws have been passed by these States. 
And here, again, I trust I may be allowed to say for myself, that I have 
taken the most public possible occasion, and in the North, freely to utter 
and largely to publish my unrestrained execration of this insane and infa- 
mous legislation. I hope this assurance will excuse me for omitting to re- 
peat those execrations at this time and place. But it is, I say, sadly true, 
that Massachusetts and these other northern States have followed the bad 
example of South Carolina, and are just as guilty as ever she was in her 
worst crimes. But here, too, let us again stop in our censures, as causes 
for secession, at the line which divides the true from the false. And, once 
more, it is not true that the northern State courts have sustained and en- 
forced these null and void legislative dead forms. On the contrary, again, 
so far as I have been able to learn, no case of conviction and punishment 
has taken place under them. And the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, 
(where Lincoln's majority is 70,000,) by the lips of that venerable judge, 
Chief Justice Shaw, has decided to be unconstitutional this "personal liberty 
bill," (as, with their usual puritanic cant and hypocrisy, they call this legis- 
lative proceeding,) and the fugitive slave law to be expressly constitutional 
and in force. Whilst in Wisconsin — tlmt next darkest corner of pseudo- 
philanthropies and novel humbugs — when the Legislature (I believe it was) 
had turned out of his oflace a Supreme Judge, for sustaining the fugitive 
slave law, he appealed to the people, and was actually re-elected over his 
anti-fugitive slave law opponent, and on this simple, sim/le issue, by a ma- 
jority of thousands in that small population. But it does not suit the ends 
of our agitators in politics to disclose such things to the southern people. 
They are not sufficiently inflammatory for the requisite disunion heats. 
And still further, (in this, our process of eliminating some little good out of 
the great mass of northern misdeeds,) Millard Fillmore, as President of the 
(still) United States, thank God ! did, by our national forces and authorities, 
from the great city of Boston, the very heart and centre of that now disgraced 
State, with its crazy State-house in chains, and when it was a test (juestion, 
seize, try, adjudge, convict, and drag home and deliver to his lawful and pro- 



owner one of these same fugitive slaves. Here, again, is an unpleasant, dull, 
comixion-])lace proceeding too tedious for southern extremists to remember. 
Instead of such acts in either section being employed in the otlier to help 
allay mutual animosities, and to restore that repose and quietude so essential 
to the healing of any wound, but so indispensable now to the southern inter- 
ests, wh)'-, what do we find 1 simply, exclusively this : The " Extremes" in 
sectional passions and prejudices in one section see, hear, publish, and re- 
member only the disagreeable, unkind, and criminal conduct of their cor- 
respondent party in the other section. Thus do the Abolitionists of the 
North gather and garble only such exceptionable facts, or manufacture, with 
a skill and rapidity which puts to shame a Lowell factory, only such out- 
and-out lies about slavery as will magnify their own virtue, piety, and other 
excellencies in Congress. And, not to be far behind the rival fanaticism of 
the North, thus, in like manner, do our fanatics and hypocrites (for God 
knows we have both) perform a correspondent office by deceiving and in- 
flaming the South. Why, if the secessionists and the Abolitionists had 
been for years and years past (like England and France in the Turkish- 
Russian war) bound together strongly and faithfully under a written treaty 
of alliance, of otfensive and defensive, they could not have more efficiently 
aided, abetted, and comforted each other than they have done, in fact and 
in truth. I think that more than half of the memhers of Congress in 
South Carolina and Alabama, for twenty years past, have been actually 
"nominated" and elected in and by two small districts of the North — I 
mean Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the " Western Reserve," in Ohio. / 
know that Charleston and Columbia, South Carolina, have more than repaid 
their debts to the Palfreys, Sumners, Giddings, Chases, etc. in elevating 
them into their bad eminences. Indeed, I wonder that Wendell Phillips 
did not call to present his kindest regards, if not his most grateful atiec- 
tions, to Mr. Yancey, in his late visit to Boston. He is a Yankee ingrate 
if he did not, and in behalf of the entire Abolition party. So much of 
these mistakes when assigned as causes of disunion. [Here some gentle- 
man in the crowd shouted " Hurrah for South Carolina!"] To which Mr. 
Anderson said: "My friend, God in his infinite, almighty mercy, may, by 
the last day, be able to forgive South Carolina for her sins. I cannot, I 
have not that chaiity. She shouted over Lincoln's election, sir P'' 

I cannot, however, pass this point in Dr. Boring's argument and advice 
without calling your special attention to how much of mere false pretext, 
as well as truth, exists in this outcry of losses by fugitive slaves to the cot- 
ton States. It must be obvious enough to any sensible mind that, in its 
nature, such chattel property always has bad, has, and ever must have, this 
peculiar fugitive quality. Those of us who hold such property (I only 
wish I was rich enough to own a few more) must always enjoy its advan- 
tages under the onus of the certain, invariable, intrinsic disadvantages that 
black hands will forever hate work; that black legs will continue to dis- 
port themselves in this amusement " of running with their heels ;" that 
they will hide themselves "through bush and through briar;" that thievish 
confederates, white, black, and yellow, bond and free, will aid, foster, and feed 
them in all countries; that "finding must always precede catching," and that 
no laws on earth ever did or will be able to punish all offences, or to remedy 
all losses. Wherefore, it no more follows that all the escaped slaves are 
chargeable against the northern States, as governments, nor against the loy- 
alty of all the northern people, nor even their majorities, nor of any large 
number among them, than that our own State governments and societies 



10 

shall be dissolved for their inefficiency in protecring these and similar rights 
and interests. Nor is this all — for I must continue to tell you thyse cisagree- 
able truths — t'^e States that lose fugitive slaves, in or by the free States, 
are exactly the only States that do not clamor for dissolving tliis invaluable 
national Government for the sake of the small per cent, of their runaway 
negroes. They are, in the order of their losses, Kentucky, Maryland, Vir- 
ginia, Missouri, and Tennessee. Whilst the States which foam at the 
mouth about fugitive slaves lost, by the action of northern Abolitionists, 
are exactly the very States that sutler least of all — almost none — not one 
in a thousand. They are situated with hundreds of miles of other jnter- 
veuing slave States. They are Suuth Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Missis- 
sippi, and Florida. The border States — losing themselves, tltroayh this 
agency, a very small per cent, of fugitives more than they would necessa- 
rily lose if there were not a free State or an Abolitionist on earth — do, ac- 
tually, so lose hundreds of slaves to one lost by all these secession States. 
This much, then, for this pretext for disunion and this real evil and injustice. 
Now, what is the remedy for it, even if it were the proper atiair of these 
'''' King Cotton States?" For they seem resolved to monopolize all the sov- 
ereign States' right extant, even that of sacrificing the whole of their own 
people's fortunes in a vain pursuit, after a very small shaving of the slaves 
belonging to the people of other States. Now, if (considered as a unit) all 
the slave States do annually lose many fugitive slaves by the seductions, 
connivance, or concealment of certain northern white men and free necfroes, 
what remedy do these politicians propose? Why, disunion of these States. 
That is, they design to make all the free States, at once, into a foreign, if 
not an inimical country. How gradually or how speedily those grain- 
growing, "servile," (not King Cotton,) but still slave States along the bor- 
der will be compelled, by the progress of disastrous and swift- marching 
events, (amongst the others, a total depletion of their slaves by the whole- 
sale hegiras which must iAen occur,) to join this same fanatic, free-State 
Confederacy, they do not pause even to consider. I presume they may 
expect the line of Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri 
to be maintained /or the exclusive benefit of the '•'^ King Cotton Stafca" to- 
gether with sufficient numbers of these troublesome and expensive chattels, 
for this new nation of enemies to practice slave-stealing upon. And they 
may also require (in their high ideas of their own State sovereignty) that 
these border States shall also hold their own white throats convenient 
to be cut in the civil broils and international wars waged for the dear sabes 
of If esse Alabama, Schivartz Mississippi, Georgia Coburg, and Saxe Texas, 
if our "German fellow-citizens" will take no umbrage at these usts of their 
father-lands of the Germanic Confederacy. What "border" for future pro- 
tection to this interest against agitations and slave-stealing will these wise 
statesmen, Davis, Yancey, Keitt & Co., the successors and assii^ns of Wash- 
ington, Jetferson, Madison, Macon, etc., interpose between King Cotton's 
negroes and the then Abolition nation ? Other slave States, like the out- 
side boy in a bed full of frightened urchins? A free desert? A twenty- 
five hun<lred mile line of forts and arsenals? A regular army of one or 
two millions of men ? It seems to my poor politico-economical brains that 
all these are curious, if not expensive modes of saving losses from fugitive 
slaves, or of introducing slavery, as a political institution, into northern 
territories. However, I pretend not to statesmanship. 

Let us ret\jrn, however, to this novel and practical remedy for recovering 
slaves. No cue denies that the South has roarained some. I chance to 



11 

know that she has recovered a great many from these same regions, as 
they stand now within our Union and under this fugitive slave law. Now, 
can any one tell me, how many we have ever recovered from the Cauadas 
and New Brunswick? — hov/ many we shall recover from Pennsylvania, 
Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, (not to tneniion p7-obable cases of other States 
eventually nearer home,) when they shall be made, by this very proposed 
Secession, what Canadas now is, a Foreign Nation? — or how many more 
we will regain when they shall become, what Sparta was to Athens, what 
Connaught is to Cork! — what Berwick ^'' ayant the Tweed" was to Norlh 
Cumberland on this side — all ..border rullians, brigands, minute men — 
retaliating, in an infinite series of inflammatory, bitter, and remorseless feuds, 
forays and depredations, which wUl soon culminate into a chronic general 
war and end in two absolute monarchies, with a pair of masters, (God 
knows, we shall all deserve and need them,) -a northern Napoleon III, 
and a southern Santa Anna, it may be. 

And this brings me to another view of this remedy, which is too dan- 
gerous to dwell upon — too horrible to think about. It were well, perhaps, 
if this general subject had not been introduced by the gentleman. But, 
no, at this time, it is too late to whisper, or to be silent, in this matter. 
If we are holding counsel over disunion — present or soon to come — we 
must — must — must begin to contemplate its necessary and its probable 
consequences. And now, then, in the alternative of such feuds and war as 
I have hinted, (and, which, in my opinion, will follow disunion as certainly 
and speedly, as any consequence its cause,) and, if there were the semblance 
of truth in all these misrej^resentations and exaggerations about the ivhole 
North, what would be our preparation and fitness for this new era, which 
my Reverend friend invokes. The southern masters have been for a long 
time saying and swearing, at their breakfast tables, in their public speeches 
and through all their presses (what the gentleman says, in effect, here to- 
night) that, the whole North is united, for the purpose of setting our slaves 
free, to cut our throats, and to desolate and burn our homes. Will the 
slaves disbelieve — before or during these wars of disunion — what their mas- 
ters so ardently believe and so madly resent? And, if this were true? — ■ 
as thank God ! it is not — Oh ! what would be our condition — (here too 
am I with you and of you, for better or for worse — "even unto the end") — 
Oh ! what would then be our condition, who must march out, to fight the 
battles of our new confederacy against our now, brethren and friends, (mil- 
lions of friends and bretliren !) whilst our wives and little ones would be 
abandoned at home, to a multitudinous, household foe, which we ourselves 
will have been actually creating and inflaming for insurrections, conflagra- 
tions, murders and worse crimes. Could we then hold three millions of 
our slaves in their proper bondage and subjection with our left hands, 
whilst we should smite their pale faced allies with our right? And only 
reflect upon these certainties, or, if you prefer it, upon these probabilities, 
being sought out and braved for us, by our great men, in behalf of a con- 
tingent, future, abstract, possible (no indeed — an impossible) right to cru- 
sade and propagandize slavery, as a weight in the balance of political power 
into territories, in which the great Calhoun said the Isothermal law forbids 
it to go or stay ; to defend the slaves and slave marts of the District of 
Columbia; to recover a miserable per cent, of fugitive slaves and to stop 
slavery agitations. Such are these complaints against the North — alas! 
but too grave and too well founded. And such are the means to be used 



12 

and the dangers to be incurred, and the ruin to be endured — if it be en- 
durable — in this great Panacea of disunion. 

And now, ray fellow-countrymen, they talk, and talk truly too, of north- 
ern ignorance and fanaticism on this subject — but what ignorance, folly 
and fanaticism are here ? For, I again repeat, it is simply untrue, that the 
whole people of the North, or armies or any matenal or numerous portion 
of them are ready or anxious or at all desirous, to march down liere as 
allies to our slaves in insurrection. The slaves could never, " whilst this 
Union lasts," have any such allies. A considerable portion, even of the 
Republican ))arty itself — bad as are its priueiples and the basis of its organ- 
ization — is not, in my optfiion, anti-slavery. Unless you choose so to name 
all opposition to the repeal of the Missouri compromise, as well as those 
who only oppose slavery, as unsuited to certain latitudes, or who oppose 
its establishment north of 30° 30', as a matter of compact and of the bal- 
ance of political power. And the northern people as a whole, (except in 
petty cliques of fool-hardy madmen, like John Brown and his handful of 
felon followers,) have, in sober truth, no such disposition towards the South. 
All this, then, is a simple slander upon the northern people. And it is 
high time that some one should say so, in behalf of the "whole North" 
and of truth. But, it is yet more important for the South (on account of 
the monstrous influence of such false rumors and statements upon its own 
domestic peace) to understand and act upon the whole truth. And it is 
most important of all, that such errors shall not constitute one fatal delu- 
sion, upon which our people infatuated, may, as I have so often said, base 
an angry excuse for this grandest of all earthly ruins — the dissolution of 
the Union of these States. As for myself, I cannot, I will not, submit in 
silent submission, whensoever or wheresoever I may hear them or any 
other delusions uttered or published, with that unholy 'purpose. 

The next excuse which the gentleman formally and deliberately assigns 
for breaking up our Government, and society, too, (as I think,) is, that 
every petition presented for the abolition of slavery, in the District of Co- 
lumbia, by all the squads and cliques of old women in pantaloons and pet- 
ticoats, has itself constituted such a violation of the original '■'■ compacC as 
will justify secession. Can this be a serious proposition ? Can a whole 
section. State or even neighborhood, be thus held responsible to the despe- 
rate point of its disorganization for whatsoever folly a small portion of its 
fools may say or do, in a free country, of their own mere notion or whim? 
This seems to me, really, too absurd for formal refutation. I am sure my 
friend, on reconsideration, would not insist upon this proposition as founded 
either in reason, riyht, or law. Nevertheless, the history of the District 
of Columbia excitement ought to furnish us grave matter for instruction 
and amendment. When liiose petitions first came in they were merely 
aimed at restraining the use of that District (the seat of national Govern- 
ment) as a common sewer-market for all the slave States, many of which 
had of themselves, long before, both regulated and prohibited such public 
sales of slaves witfTin their own limits. Tliis increased the nuisance — for 
such Mr. Clay and numbers of other southern slaveholders pronounced it 
as conducted on Pennsylvania avenue. The petitioners were at first few 
in number and small in influence. Instantly the hotspurs of the South — 
for every army has its fire-eaters — clamored for a rule to refuse receivinr/ 
the petitions, the pajiers themselves. Mr. Clay again, with numbers of 
other Senators and Representatives from the South, counseled more mode- 
ration — advised that i\xQ '' riyht of petition'^ was, an hereditary English, 



13 

American, constitutional right, lying at the foundation of all free institu- 
tions; that the right to ask and the obligation to grant were wholly difter- 
ent things ; that to deny the right to petition for anything, however trivial, 
absurd, knd unconstitutional, was to give the signers the advantage of 
adding to one complaint, for which few cared — another, against a constitu- 
tional prohibition, svhich mankind must generally abhor. Accordingly 
they advised that the petitions should be received and referred to a com- 
mittee, to report, briefly, " that Congress ought not to grant the prayer of 
the petitioners," But Messrs. Khett, Wise ik Co. were wiser, however, than 
Henry Clay and his friends. They demanded a ncio rule, viz: that the 
petitions should not be received, read, or referred. They again and again, 
as they often do now, in order to frighten minds, called Heiiry Clay, in 
speech and print, an Abolitionist, and at last carried their point in the 
famous Acheson rule. The result you all know. It was as Mr. Clay had 
60 distinctly forewarned them. From dozens the petitioneis incieased to 
hundreds, from hundreds to thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of 
thousands of men, women, children, dogs, and negroes, who first cared no 
more for the slaves or slave markets in the District of Columbia or South 
Carolina than for the man in the moon. Congress was for years flooded 
with these petitions for " the right of petition." The public business was 
interrupted by debates upon them until we would have thought that there 
was no measure on earth of the least interest or value except the 21st rule. 
It was swept away in a whirlwind of popular indignation at the North, 
and of contempt at the South. Real Abolitionists were made by this ex- 
periment of shallow, conceited demagogues in statesmanship. The actual 
rights and the substantial interests of the South were madly staked, under 
frequent threats of disunion, unless their rule was maintained upon this 
miserable confusion of diflerent and unequal principles — the true and the 
untrue — the right and the wrong — the constitutional and the unconstitu- 
tional. Now, I ask, has the South remembered this sad and mortifying 
lesson? Alas, no! As you have seen, some of your wisest and best men 
still urge the staking of your whole slave property in the States, legally and 
securely held, together with the Union itself, " the palladium of our safety," 
against another 21st rule in the District of Columbia, or the right of some 
brother Keutuckian of mine to take his black mammy (nobody was ever 
foolish enough to go thither with any more valuable slave) to the bleak 
snow-plains of Kansas. And as to the alternative of secession, or of new 
guarantees assented to by the North, in all sincerity I must say that, though 
I would gladly cling to any, the most desperate hope for reconciliation of 
this terrible feud, I greatly fear, that when fresh guarantees are demanded 
of the other party they will bitterly remind us of the fate of the former 
compromises. 

And thus has the South been continually and uselessly compelled by 
her politicians to diminish the number of her own friends in the North 
and to increase those of her enemies. 

Is this forever to be so? Must the true, permanent, invaluable interests 
of the southern people, their lands, their slaves, all their property, personal 
and public, their peace, their patriotism, be forever made a sacrifice to 
mere politics, for the sole benefit of merest politicians? Will our south- 
ern statesmen — for we have yet a few statesmen left us — thus always con- 
tinue to devote all their high faculties to the single end of propagating the 
faith of slavery for its difl'usion simply as a political institution, and in soils 
and climates where neither King Cotton nor Queen Sugar can ever reign ? 



14 

Or else must they ever, in dumb and cowardly silence, bend like willow 
wands, not stand like our sturdy live oaks, resistant to the storm of politi- 
cal excitement which they see our demagogues have raised by horrid pic- 
tures of northern aggression, part true and part false, and which they cease- 
lessly parade before the southern people? Ai-e the private, personal inter- 
ests, the daily business of the aggregate men, the millions of planters, 
farmers, merchants, and mechanics, who make up the peopli^ of the South, 
actually worthless in the scale against the salaries, and ^^er dieyn, and mile- 
age allowance of a few dozen members of Congress? Shall we wholly 
forget the millions of slaves, worth thousands of millions of dollars, held 
legally, safely, unquestioned '\-s the States, to go full moon mad after a black 
wet-nurse in Kansas, or a Kentucky runaway at Niagara? 

Lastly — but I am admonished, it is time forme to conclude — the passage 
of the Missouri Compromise and the agitation of the slavery question are 
intimated as causes justifying secession. As my sole purpose has been, in 
all that I have said here to-night, to endeavor on the verge of this stupen- 
dous crisis, (over which our highest and dearest interests of property, 
liberty and life are toppling,) to ask the patient attention of all ])arlies, to 
those mistakes in the game of politics which the South has committed, and 
to their dreadful consequences, not for any purpose of censure of what is 
past and irrevocable, but of avoidance of similar errors in the future. It 
is better not to say what I think upon this matter of the repeal of that 
compromise. It is too recent, and too much identified with our own present 
party divisions, for me to discuss it without giving offence to some of you, 
and so divi<liug the friends of the Union in this meeting, who are from all 
the southern parties. Still, I trust I may be allowed to say without giving 
the least otfence, that, since the repose given by the Com]>romise measures 
of 1850, the South is not wholly without blame for reagitating these dan- 
gerous questions. 

Having declared the Union is already dissolved, and attempted to justify 
the dissolution by assignment of sutiicient causes, Dr. Boring very ingeni- 
ously brings up in the rear the question of the constitutional right to secede. 
On this much mooted and really. very ditiicult question he is very clear and 
brief; and his argument is the best that can be made on that side. Yet, 
it is not satisfactory to my mind. "The same power that ties can untie. 
The equal, independent. Colonies, freely made this ' Compact.' They may 
freely and peaceably unmake it, for causes, of which each State is to he the 
sole judged Now, is it not obvious that all governments are based upon a 
supposeil assent to theoiiginal compact? This argument would, therefore, 
make all others as mueh ropes of sand as our own. It by no means follows, 
with either peoples or individuals, that an original equality of freedom in 
making a compact of Union, must necessarily preserve and continue, in either 
separately, a constant power to dissolve it at its sole ]>leasure and exclusive 
decision. For instance: A man and woman have equal powers of assent or 
dissent in forming the matrimonial compact. But, after they are united in 
the holy bands, does the gentleman's creed of Christianity, or his theory 
of the law, allow the one to divorce the other whenever she may grow a 
little red in the face with vexation ? Is either the husband or wife, or any 
party in a trading firm, the sole judge of " the mode and measure of redress ? " 
My iViend says the colonies were equal, and he leaps, in his history, from 
colonies to this Union. But, what was the actual progress of these events? 
If I have read my liorn-books aright, there was an intermediate experiment 
of some six years' trial. The colonies, after gaining their independence of 



15 

Great Britain, actually made this very experiment of being purely sovereign 
States and independent of each other in a mere confederacy. And it proved 
a dead, out-and-out, failure ! Wherefore, we are solemnly assured in the 
very preamble to our noble Constitution, in its very first words, — "We, the 
people (not the colonies, nor the States by name, but overlooking them,) — 
"We, the people of the United States, in order to form a moi'e perfect 
Union," tkc, (fee, "do ordain and establish this Constitution, (not enter 
into articles of confederation merely.) 

The whole question in the case, then, is not what the colonies or States 
of the Confederacy might have done. Certainly they might, if they had so 
chosen, have : firstly, remained as separate as France and England ; secondly, 
or have entered into a league or confederacy like the Achaian League of 
Greece, or that of the German States. On the other hand, will any one 
deny that they likewise had the power to have wholly abolished all their 
old Colonial lines, and reformed them all into one single State, as com- 
pletely a unit as is France; or, again, that they then had the right and the 
power, not wholly, but partially to have surrendered their separate Govern- 
mental right; and, with the powers so granted, to have established the 
Constitution of another actual Government, (not '' confed^-acy,") whilst 
each, alike and equally, retained certain and very important rights and func- 
tions within itself. And this last, in my poor opinion, is what they did in 
fact. Wherefore, being "ordained" in order to fulfil all the highest and 
best ends of Government (as is specified in this preamble) to ourselves and 
our posterity, it is by no means an engagement which any part of that people, 
or any State of that Union, can as lightly and easily " secede " from, as if 
the old Confederacy still remained, and as if "a more perfect Uniorf" had 
not been "ordained and established." To my mind, therefore, secession is 
what Gen. Jackson proclaimed it, only revolution. 

■I cannot — I have not the heart, if you had the patience — to discuss this 
other question of the ability or inability of our gallant little army to re- 
duce the revolting States again to their proper sphere of duty and interest. 
I know well enough that neither the North nor any foreign Power could 
subdue the South. But in a general, common, complete ruin, what boots 
it — who shall be hailed victor? But, I cannot conclude, without calling 
attention to the prevalent idea of the Southern Confederacy being "pro- 
tected" by England — God of Prophecy ! was George Washington an in- 
spired pr^kphet ? In his solemn, affectionate Farewell Address, he declares 
this very Union, or as he construes it, "the uni(7j of government which 
constitu!.os you one people, the main pillar in the edifice of our real inde- 
pendence.'''' IIow wonderfidly did he foresee all these dangers and results? 
It is scarcely proposed to shatter that "unity of government" and redivide 
it into its primitive fragments, than all "our real independence" lost 
forever ! — do we instantly hear of an expected dependence upon our old 
tyrant, England, exclusively for our shipping; our manufactures; our mer- 
chandize; our market for our staples and a Navy. Alas! that "inde- 
pendent" States of our North American Union, should ever dream of 
crawling together with Honduras, the Belize, and the dissevered States of 
Central America, like a litter of timid whelps, with their backs ajl humped 
and their tails all tightly tucked between their trendiling legs, around be- 
hind, and under the British Lion — for "protection !" 

No — no — never — never. Rather let us end as we began. Let us all 
look again on that banner of beauty and of glory. And, whilst ever the 
solid earth can sustain its flagstaff, or the sun cast light upon its emblems 



16 

of purity aud power,, or the air can stir a breeze to unfold, star by star, its 
full and glittering constellation. Whilst ever and wheresoever Americans 
of any generation shall have eyes to see it, hands to uphold it, hearts to 
love it, or hearts-blood to shed for it — Oh ! may this flag of our Father's 
Union — our Union — its colors all clean and bright, the snowy white, the 
pure heart-blood red, and the unfading true blue of the azure sky, — no 
sister star bedimmed nor gone rayless and lost in outer darkness, our 
■whole constellation complete. Oh ! may it thus stand and remain the 
most loved and treasured legacy to our latest posterity, co-existent with 
the earth, the air, the very sun himself. 

Note. — After Mr. Anderson had concluded. Dr. Boring asked him to 
say that he had said nothing of protection or a protectorate by Great 
Britain, whereupon Mr. A. arose again and told the audience that Dr. 
Boring had said nothing of the kind. Nor had he any allusion on this 
part of the subject to the Doctor but to a great many others, who do look 
and always have looked in that direction, upon the happening of this 
baneful event. 



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